Slow Start for Tattersalls' Craven Breeze-Up Sale

After a shaky start Tuesday night, Tattersalls’ 2007 Craven Breeze-Up Sale rallied to produce a 5,138,000gns turnover, 9% short of last year’s figure, a 74,464gns average, down 1% and 52,000gns median, down 5%.

The clearance rate of 70% dropped sharply from the 2006 figure of 84%.

A Quiet American filly out of Laiyl (Ire) (Nureyev) bought for $140,000 at Keeneland September by Colonial Partners topped the evening when selling for 370,000gns to agent Gill Richardson.

Offered from Kip Elser’s Kirkwood Stables, she had arrived in Newmarket in late March.

Agents James Delahooke, Richard Brown and Paul Webber were among those to try for the filly but Richardson finally outbid Hamdan Al Maktoum’s racing manager Angus Gold.

U.S. sires accounted for six of the top nine lots with a Johannesburg colt, who made 130,000 euros at Goffs in October, making 310,000gns when reoffered from Con Marnane’s Co Tipperary-based Bansha House Stables.

Agent Jamie McCalmont, standing with trainer Jeremy Noseda, eventually won a long battle for the colt with Kuwaiti owner Saleh Al Homaizi the underbidder. McCalmont signed for another to show a handsome profit, a Hawk Wing colt bought for 40,000gns at Tattersalls in October by locally-based consignor Emma O’Gorman and resold for 190,000gns.

A 230,000gns Dynaformer colt out of Perfect Drift's (Dynaformer) half-sister Gypsy (Marfa), who was bought for $160,000 at Keeneland September, is set to remain in Newmarket after selling to agent Amanda Skiffington, buying for trainer James Fanshawe.

Great Britain's premier yearling auction got off to a solid start in Newmarket Oct. 9 when Coolmore principal John Magnier paid the top price of 500,000 guineas (about $1,067,000) for the last lot offered.